A mobile station communicating with a base station in a conventional wireless network is assigned a Public Long Code Mask (PLCM). Each mobile station uses its unique PLCM during transmission in order to avoid cross-talk (i.e., collisions) with other mobile stations. The PLCM is typically generated from the Electronic Serial Number of the mobile station.
However, because of the large number of mobile stations (e.g., cell phones, wireless PCs, and other wireless terminals) now being used to communicate over wireless networks, the available supply of Electronic Serial Numbers is becoming exhausted. This may lead to situations in which wireless terminals having the same ESN may attempt to communicate with the same base station. Therefore, new techniques for generating a PLCM are being considered. These techniques include a Mobile Equipment Identifier (MEID)-generated PLCM and a base station-assigned PLCM.
For base station-assigned PLCMs, there is no standard format to be used by the base station for PLCM assignment. This results in complicated algorithms that must be used by the base station for managing (or provisioning) the PLCMs, in order to guarantee that no collisions occur between different mobile stations, which would put the privacy of the user at risk. In addition, this may also lead to inter-operability issues between the base stations of different vendors.
Therefore, there is a need in the art for improved techniques for managing the assignment of PLCMs in a wireless network. In particular, there is a need for a standards technique to be used by base stations to assign unique PLCMs to mobile stations communicating in a wireless network.